


and love too

by QuietLittleVoices



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Cats, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-02 20:44:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14553171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuietLittleVoices/pseuds/QuietLittleVoices
Summary: Sammy has a cat. Jack thinks the cat hates him, and is determined to fix it.





	and love too

**Author's Note:**

> Title from: “Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. / These, our bodies, possessed by light. / Tell me we'll never get used to it.”
> 
> Cronkite the Cat borrowed (stolen) from Courtney/helloearthling's fic 'barely breathe'. 
> 
> I haven't written fic in like... 300 years probably, and never for this fandom before, so please be nice?

The first time Sammy touches Jack in over four years - his hand on Jack’s shoulder, gripping, pulling him in towards Sammy - it feels like he’s on fire. It feels like the whole  _ world _ should be on fire as Sammy finally pulls Jack towards him, feels Jack’s hands cling to the back of his shirt. He’s wanted this, imagined this for so long that at times he’d thought he could almost feel it, and now his nerves are racing to take in the feeling, the solidness of Jack against him. He buries his face in Jack’s hair, at the side of his head, and breathes in the smell of ozone and static electricity, of the Void still clinging to Jack and the air around them. 

And then the world comes rushing in, all at once, like a vacuum opened up. Lily throws herself into them, wrapping her arms around them both and hiding her face in Jack’s shoulder. “Don’t you  _ ever _ do that to me again,” she tells him, going for stern but being slightly undercut by the thickness in her voice. It makes Jack laugh, just for a moment - a single second that makes something in Sammy’s chest turn on for the first time in a long time. 

 

It isn’t easy. Not at first, and not after a while. Jack is conscious when they save him, and he stays that way. They have him checked out by doctors and he comes back with a pretty clean bill of health. The Void isn’t a physical space, so Jack didn’t get dehydrated or malnourished. 

It isn’t even a question that Jack will live with Sammy. But before they set their plan in motion, Sammy had made up the guest room - not difficult, since that was where he’d had most of the boxes of Jack’s things stuffed in the closet - just in case. In case Jack needed space, or special care, or just didn’t want to be in the same room with Sammy after he’d  _ failed _ for so long. He shouldn’t have worried about that; Jack doesn’t want to be alone, doesn’t like the dark, and doesn’t hate Sammy. 

He should have worried about his cat. 

Cronkite had always been standoffish with strangers, aside from Ben who had gifted Sammy the cat in an effort to give Sammy something to live for, but he was very affectionate with Sammy. He would curl up next to Sammy on the sofa, tangle around his feet in the kitchen, but around other people he would disappear. For some reason, Sammy thought Jack would be an exception the same way Ben was - that somehow, intuitively, Cronkite would know how much Sammy loved Jack and love him too. 

A few months had passed after they had saved Jack and Cronkite still left the room whenever Jack entered. 

“I think your cat hates me,” Jack mutters, sinking his head into Sammy’s chest as they laid down for bed. 

“Noo,” Sammy protested weakly, brushing his hand through Jack’s hair. (It never got easier - every time he touched Jack it was like he was on fire all over again and he knew he would never take a second with Jack for granted ever again). “He’s just - well... He’s protective.”

“Protective?” Jack repeated skeptically, looking up at Sammy awkwardly and raising an eyebrow. 

Sammy swallowed around a lump in his throat. “I wasn’t... in the best place when I got him. And he sort of took it on himself to protect me, I guess?” They’d talked about this before, but it was still painful and awkward and shameful and a million other emotions that Sammy couldn’t untangle from the knot in his stomach when he thought about the year leading up to Jack’s return. “He hates Emily too, if that helps.”

“It kind of does.” Jack laid his head back down. “I just don’t want him to think I’m a threat to you or - or to anyone.”

Sammy didn’t have to be able to see Jack’s face to know what it looked like as he thought. He could feel it in the set of Jack’s shoulders, how he held his body, that Jack had a Plan and no one could stand in his way. 

 

Jack didn’t spent a lot of time alone in the apartment, or alone in general. If he wanted to go back to sleep when Sammy left to go to the station, then he’d go to Emily’s and use her guest room, and if he didn’t then he would come with Sammy to the station and play catch-up with all the things he’d missed.

Because of this, it took him a while to find Cronkite’s hiding spot. Sammy thought it was funny, watching Jack meticulously search the apartment as soon as the cat disappeared, and teased him whenever he got annoyed at not being able to find Cronkite.

“He’s a pretty big cat,” Sammy said as Jack lifted up seat cushions and looked behind the TV.

Jack waved him off. “Cats are basically liquid, I’m sure he could fit if he wanted to.”

Sammy shrugged with a smile on his face and went back to pretending to work on his laptop at the kitchen table, keeping his eyes on Jack until he left the room.

An hour passed without Jack coming back into the main section of the apartment, and with it being close to dinner time anyway Sammy decided to get up and see where his fiancé had ended up in his seemingly endless cat-search. He found him in the guest room, laying on his back and locked in a staring contest with Cronkite who was perched on the closet shelf.

“What are you doing?” Sammy asked, amusedly crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe. 

Jack barely reacted to Sammy’s entrance, just flicking his eyes towards him for a moment. “I did some research about cats,” he admitted, “and most people agree you gotta let them come to you. Someone recommended laying down and making eye contact.”

“I… see.” Sammy nodded slowly. “Did you want dinner? Or do you just want to keep staring at Cronkite?”

Jack sighed and sat up, stretching his shoulders a little bit. “Yeah, I’ll eat. Could you try to get Cronkite to see me filling his bowl? I saw something else that talked about how cats will start to like the people that feed them.”

Sammy rolled his eyes. “Sure, whatever you want.” He leaned over to kiss the side of Jack’s head as he passed and then walked to the kitchen behind him.

 

Lily came over and stayed in the guest room amidst her search for an apartment in town. She technically still lived in the city, but she was trying to move since she could do her podcast anywhere in the world.

She let herself in to find Jack on the sofa, in a staring match with Cronkite who was on the table next to Sammy. After weeks of trying to get Cronkite used to his presence, Jack had finally succeeded in getting the cat to not leave the room when he entered, and was hoping that Cronkite would actually approach him by the end of the month. Cronkite fled the room as soon as he saw Lily and Jack sighed, sitting back into the couch.

“What’s this about?” Lily asked, leaving her small suitcase by the door and going to sit with Jack.

“He’s trying to get Cronkite to love him,” Sammy offered.

Jack frowned petulantly. “He acts like I’m his evil step-mother. I feed him! I get him toys!”

Lily nodded along as Jack aired his woes. “So it’s exactly like when you first met Sammy, is what I’m hearing.”

Jack shrugged but nodded while Sammy gave them both a confused look. “What do you mean? I never hated Jack.”

“You  _ just _ said Cronkite doesn’t hate me, liar,” Jack muttered.

“He doesn’t - that’s not what I meant,” Sammy replied, shutting his laptop to look at the siblings more directly. “I guess I don’t really remember how we became friends,” he admitted. “Even when we first met, I felt like I’d known you for years.”

“Sap,” Lily said. “You were  _ so _ awkward in college; you tried to be all aloof, and turned down a bunch of Jack’s invitations at first.”

Sammy thought about it. “That… sounds like me,” he admitted. “I thought you guys were so cool.” Jack looked like he wanted to make a remark about that, so Sammy added quickly, “I know better now.”

 

It finally happened one night when Sammy and Jack were laying down to sleep after Ben and Emily had been over for their weekly Double Date Movie Night™ (copyright Ben Arnold, 2019).

Cronkite walked into the bedroom.

Sammy could feel Jack hold his breath and rolled his eyes, filing it away to tease his fiancé about later. But he watched as Cronkite jumped up onto the bed and laid down on Sammy’s chest, pushing his head under Jack’s hand. Jack tentatively stroked the cat between the eyes a few times, earning a happy purr. Sammy looked down and saw pure, unbridled happiness in Jack’s eyes for the first time in what felt like forever. 

For a moment he felt like he had just gotten Jack back all over again - the smell of static, his blood boiling - and then it settled. Everything was calm. The soft light of the nightlight kept the shadows far enough away, unable to touch his little family. 


End file.
